This time we have a jumble of dreams all mixed in together. Call it a Creole jambalaya. Yum.
First ingredient is Red. There’s a girl’s night, at night. The setting of the story is London. I will ignore the squeak I heard just now as I write this, perhaps in a bid to steal my story or to object to what I am writing. It is hard for me to tell what’s real so you tell me. The truth, that is.
The details of the party are sketchy. Suffice it to say, there a girl there dressed to the nines, in a highly stylized dress that is the opposite of “laissez-faire” fashion, with poof-y sleeves and rouches from top to bottom. She wears heavy makeup worthy of a clown, and tightly coiffed hair, sleeked back into a curly ponytail of sorts. Her eye shadow is red, and streaks way beyond her eye lids, well into her upper cheekbone. Is it a blusher, then? If yes, she is ready to marry a prince. Take note Megan Markel. That’s how to do it!
Someone, I think it was me, asks her about her plans because the party is over. She says she is meeting her ex afterwards. Dressed like that, she must be trying to pull all the stops to get him back. Oh, I forgot to say, she’s Black. Does that matter? You tell me.
I marvel at the fact that I am in London of all places and not the US. For some reason, that makes sense. It is another scam to force me back with Kamal. At this juncture of my sleep, I am in a lucid wake state and I say in response, “I am divorced” while I hear another voice in my head saying “married.” Who is speaking lies? You tell me. Maysa, right?
There is a Southeast Asian woman and she is a woman not a little girl. She is short and small in stature, maybe slightly “touched” in the head, if you know what I mean. It’s her eyes that give her away. Anyways, this woman-child has a problem, how to get home? She speaks a language I don’t recognize. But not to worry, her minder is here, just in the nick of time to pick her up. I sigh a sigh of relief. One less thing to worry about. I start thinking about how I don’t have friends, I rely mostly on the parents of Aymen’s friends to double as “friends” for me.
The other “dreams” I had over the night escape me now. I did remember them within the last hours when I decided to write this note out. That is the question of my days, to write or not to write? While I sit here in the cold, enjoying my daily fresh air outing from my prison cell of an apartment, I want to thank the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) for securing some concessions from my jailers on the basis of the Geneva Convention, no doubt. I can only hope they are successful in rescuing my release outright from this hostage taking and grant me complete freedom. Having participated in letter-writing campaigns for Amnesty International at Walsingham Academy, I pray there are high schoolers now, still writing letters for my release. Assuming Diane Wahl and her brother and his nightly visiting-ghost which was captured conveniently on her mobile phone, allow it to happen. This given the growl at the thanksgiving dinner table when I asked for help from the State Department to get out of a Tehran prison. I am American, where is the rescue brigade?
It has gotten too cold. I head back to my pod. As I wait for the lift, I tease two women sitting in the club room, one dressed all in white, wearing a bowler hat over a white scarf draped over her hair. I point to a mountain in the distance, over the horizon, and tell them it is Mt Kilimanjaro. They don’t get the joke. So I press on, going up to their table. I say, “do you know Mt. Kilimanjaro?” They say, “No.” Do you know Kenya and Tanzania? They say “No.” Do you know Africa? They say, “No.” I ask them where they are from. This is the unbelievable part. They are Egyptian! I immediately switch to Arabic. How do you not know Kenya and Tanzania, I ask. I start motioning in the air the geography, starting with Egypt, down to Sudan, Kenya, and Tanzania. They get it, and they say “Africa” in unison and recognition. I ask them aren’t they African also? They ignore my question, and ask me where I am from. Am I from Sudan? I reply, I am American , a response worthy of Tennesseean Neel, my college friend, who upset Sangita to no end by that clever answer. She completely wrote him out of her book after that. Which is ironic because he ended up dating her best friend Serena for years. She couldn’t escape him lol. I tell the two Egyptian women to greet Mona El-Banna for me. They laugh. In the lift, on the way down to my flat, I say out loud to Bola, my fellow book club host, that she was right. Egyptians really don’t know they are African.
I need to interject here and “say” this because it upsets and terrifies me to death. My iPhone is still acting up. I am battling just to type out the words. Things are being rewritten in front of my eyes, as I type. The letter “n” keeps being changed to “m” by force. Words keeps getting misspelled in a pattern that is on repeat. For example, “are” just got changed to “ate.” When I send out my notes, hard returns on the wall of text keep appearing out of nowhere, even when I checked the text prior to clicking send. This is all madness, in keeping with the noise, words “spoken” in my mind like just now, and fake “sorrys” I hear as I fight to maintain my integrity and keep Maysa out and away from me. She is trying to “eat” with me and it sounds so inappropriate and immoral that I am at my wit’s end of how shameless she is. Indeed, Maysa is batshit crazy! Stop Maysa now.
I just remembered a bit of another dreamscape which featured the presidential candidate Vivek (rhymes with cake as he keeps correcting people) Ramaswamy. He said something to me, really loud and clear but I forget what it was. I answered back, angrily. I want him to know and speak the truth. I have nothing against the man, I just would prefer he not intercept my sleep. I prefer no one intercept my sleep. Because as I famously said to my ex-husband Kamal, I love sleep. He quipped back wittily, in mock hurt, “I thought you love me.” I laughed. My kind of humor. But seriously (looking at you, Susan), I don’t know what love is. Have you read my post?
P.S. Susan, can you let Fraser know that I lost his book “Redemption Song” with Malcom X on the cover? I will replace it next time I am in London. I will not be getting back to my ex. All of the United Kingdom including Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, and the little little island doubling as Nuclear test sites, are out of my book.
P.S.S. Susan, have you located my book yet? Please reply and let me know. Is this polite enough for your Victorian upbringing?